The Famous Stanley Kidnapping Case

Zusatztext "Scary entertainment and a good look at Italy." Informationen zum Autor Zilpha Keatley Snyder is the author of The Egypt Game , The Headless Cupid , and The Witches of Worm , all Newbery Honor Books. Her most recent books include The Treasures of Weatherby , The Bronze Pen , William S. and the Great Escape , and William’s Midsummer Dreams . She lives in Mill Valley, California. Visit her at ZKSnyder.com. Klappentext Kidnappers in Italy have their hands full when the captive American children advise them on running a better kidnapping and on proper nutrition.The Famous Stanley Kidnapping Case one None of it would have happened if it hadn’t been for Molly’s Italian uncle, so the very beginning was way back in February. David remembered the beginning very well, because for just a minute, it had scared him half to death. It all started on a cold drizzly afternoon when he and Amanda had been, as usual, in the midst of some kind of an argument. They’d gotten off the school bus together and walked down the long curving driveway that led around to the back of the big old house and, still arguing, slammed through the back door into the kitchen—and found Molly crying at the kitchen table. The crying, by itself, wouldn’t have been too much of a shock, because Molly tended to cry quite a bit for an adult person. David had seen her cry over a burned dinner—which was the way Molly’s dinners turned out fairly often—or because she’d messed up a painting she’d been working on. But that was red-faced, angry crying that usually got mixed up with laughing at herself for being so ridiculous. This was different. When Molly’s face came up off her arms, it looked terrible: pale and swollen and awfully sad; and immediately David felt himself going stiff and cold with fright. Amanda, however, was so busy winning the argument that she didn’t even notice until David said, “Molly?” in a shaky whisper. When Amanda finally looked at her mother and said, “Mom? What is it? What happened?” she sounded surprised and worried, but even then not really scared. Not the way David was. It wasn’t until later, when he’d had time to think about it, that David understood the difference. He decided then that Amanda’s reaction was only natural—but so was his. Probably most people who were thirteen years old, like Amanda, just naturally felt that really terrible things only happened to other people—in the newspapers or in some other town or country. So even when she saw Molly’s face and knew something bad had happened, she wasn’t really frightened. David, who was actually almost a year younger than Amanda, would probably have felt the same way, except that his own mother had died when he was nine years old; and after something like that happens, you’re just not as sure anymore. So when he’d first seen Molly’s face, he hadn’t been sure that something hadn’t happened to—Dad, maybe, or one of the kids. But then Molly said it was her uncle—that Uncle Sid had died in Italy—and suddenly David felt as if something huge and cold in the middle of his chest had broken up into warm trickles of relief. Which would have been a good feeling, except that right away he started feeling guilty for being so glad about Molly’s poor old uncle. Particularly when Molly was obviously feeling absolutely terrible about him. All the Stanley kids had heard quite a bit about Uncle Sid since the summer before when Molly had married Jeffrey A. Stanley, who was their father. Uncle Sid had been an artist like Molly, and a bachelor with no family of his own to take an interest in; so when Molly was a kid, he’d been almost a second father to her...

Product details

• Authors: Zilpha Keatley Snyder
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster USA
• Languages: English
• Age Recommendation: ages 8 to 12
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 02.09.2014
• EAN: 9781481424691
• ISBN: 978-1-4814-2469-1
• No. of pages: 240
• Series: The Stanley Family; Stanley Family
• Subject: Children's and young people's books